As we draw ever nearer to the eventual closure of NCsoft’s
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/32"
target="_blank">Tabula Rasa,
the MMO community continues to gesticulate over the details of the
closure, what prompted the sudden about-face, and what the developers
at Destination Games will be doing after the inevitable shut down of
the game’s servers. Last week, I posted the first portion of
my
extensive interview with
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/31"
target="_blank">Auto Assault’s
Scott Brown, an individual who has been there, done that, and lived to
tell about it in terms of MMO closures. In the final section of our two
part interview, Scott and I discuss the true meaning of beta (not to be
confused with the true meaning of Christmas), the chances of reviving a
game after it has launched, and the notion of creating an amazing MMOG.
If you haven’t checked out
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/51644" target="_blank">part
one, go and do it now then hop over to our forums and weigh
in on Scott’s thoughts!

Ten
Ton Hammer: Is there any way a game can be saved once the game
underperforms at launch? Is there a way to resurrect the game?

Scott Brown: I don’t think so. In my opinion, if
you launch
dead, you’re dead. You can always keep those few fans that
you have,
and there will always be a small percentage that is into what you
built, but changing public perception is almost impossible. A great
example of this is Windows Vista. People have decided that Vista is
terrible, and it doesn’t matter what Microsoft does: Vista
will always
be terrible to the people.